there there are amendments where they produce evidence that that is not being enforced. >> we are talking not in general for all the rebels. we are talking about the hierarchy that left and didn't want to shoot back at their civilians. to be able to support them to end the war. >>. >> the executive director of the task force, producer and writer for the battlefield. thank you very much. that is all in for this evening. rachel maddow starts now. >> thanks to you at home for staying with us on a busy news day. the white house announced that president obama is about to pick a whole bunch of new judges. three nominees for the very influential and high profile d.c. circuit court. if are a sense of how big of a deal it is, consider that of the nine justices currently on the supreme court, four of the nine came from the d.c. circuit. a ton of vacant seats on that court right now. republicans in the senate say they want to keep them all

vacant so president obama cannot get his nominees on a court that important. president obama we are told today will be nominating three judges for that court tomorrow in a ceremony that will be held in the most unsubtle place in the world. the rose garden. >> a divided decision about dna. if you are arrested if are a serious crime, they can force you to give a dna sample even if you don't want to. it was a 5-4 decision, but not the conservative-liberal split. scalia was joined in his position by the more liberal justices begins berg and sotomayor. a foursome that doesn't usually exist in nature. in afghanistan, an attack aimed at forces in the eastern part of the country claimed the lives of two american soldier and an afghan policeman and at least

nine kids. the bomb was set off boy a suicide bomber on a motorcycle outside a boy's school in the province. this is following an earlier attack that killed seven members of the same family. today the interior department approved three giant energy projects on public lands. two solar and one geothermal. together these generate enough electricity to power 200,000 homes. the two solar projects are in nevada and arizona. the geothermal is in a place that is called new york kenyan. it sounds east coast, but it is in nevada. the gun lobby forced a recall election against the democratic president of the colorado state senate in his leadership in passing gun reforms. the boston fire chief resigned as well as a no confidence vote with the 13 deputy chiefs that accused the chief of refusing to

assume command on scene in the aftermath of the boston bombing. they accuse him of taking a selfy photo of himself from a roof top of a burning building instead of taking command at that scene as well. he was on the job for less than two years in boston and told he would be out by friday. there is a lot going on in today's news. we begin with doones bury. reliably excellent genius commentary and jokes since the 1970s. doones bury is a large cast of fictional characters who you get to love, even the creepy ones. it has always mixed in real political figures which are often characterized in viz why you will means. for example, newt gingrich was a little floating with a lip fuse as if it might pop at any

moment. george w. bush after the 2000 recount became a walking and talking asterisk sometimes wearing a hat. a news man character is clearly sam donaldson. there is also a character called lacey davenport. he was quite transparently based on an actual but now largely forgeten american political figure. the character lives on in the script, but the basis of the character has pretty much been forgotten in real life. the basis of the character in boo doones bury was a congresswoman from new jersey named mill cent fenwick. she was a republican member of congress from new jersey. people say that politicians like mitt romney and george hw bush had a patrishian problem. they seemed too hoity toity to

relate to the regular people. mitt romney and george hw bush had nothing on her. she is smoking a pipe. she was the platonic form of patrishian. see this decided she would try to move up to the house of lords by which i mean the senate. one of new jersey's two seats was all of a sudden unexpectedly an open seat and she decided to make the trial. the reason they had an open seat that year was because of ab scam. >> the ad scam, videotapes of congress men committing crimes. it started for years ago with the house in washington where fbi agents posed as representatives of rich arabs looking for favors and succeeded in bribing congress men and senator and sentenced to years in prison. >> the congressman and senator. a new jersey senator named harrison williams.

he gave up the seat when convicted of bribery with the disaster. the governor at the time was a republican. he had to appoint someone to fill the point until an election could be held. the governor at the time appointed a place holder who is meant to hold the seat and the people could in that election choose the true successor for the guy who was now in jail. then for the november 1982 election, republicans had to pick who they wanted to run for the seat, they picked for real, mill cent fenwick. >> this year congressional campaign includes the house members trying to enlarge their careers by moving up through the senate. there eight of them, but none with a national reputation except one. this is the face and profile of an american aristocrat and also the face of the republican party senate candidate in new jersey,

mill cent hammond fenwick. she computes upper class breeding and wealth. the chanel style suits and heavy jewelry. the studied indifference to the nitty-gritty of politics. her small talk with those of lesser station. >> i love to see productive land. >> the feisty refusing to give up her famous pipe. >> that pipe, i was almost going to give it up and if i hear more time pipe smoking grandma. i can't give up the grandchildren, i have to give up the pipe. i couldn't stand it. i don't like that sort of thing at all. i am not going to be bullied. >> she is now the favorite in the senate race, her election is not a given. she has not done well in the campaign debates. her party is out governed 3-2. she doesn't have the claim of

black support. she was not allowed to speak at an naacp dipper until after the tv cameras left. everybody takes her seriously as a candidate, especially her democratic opponent, frank lautenbe lautenberg. >> it's no longer frank who. they say frank when. >> he is running as if he was not behind in the polls. >> fenwick was heavily favored to win that race in 1982. she had all of the money in the world and running if are a seat that was open because of a democrat who held the seat before was convicted of bribery and republicans should have won that seat. everyone thought she was going to win that seat. an underdog named frank lautenberg beat her and won the seat. he died this morning at the age of 89 at home in new jersey. he was remembered as the last world war ii veteran and as a father and a businessman and

unusually consequential united states senator who has high profile legislation and policy changes associated with his name and public life. frank lautenberg was remembered as a man whose political career pivoted on amazing circumstances. his career started with the vacancy and the race against fenwick and her pipe and the out of the blue underdog victory in the race. he served for 18 years until the year 2000 when he retired from the senate saying he did not feel like fund-raising to run again, but as soon as he retired, literally at the press conference where he announce said he was retiring, he then turned to the friend and said he was making a mistake. he immediately regretted it. less than two years later when another senator from new jersey, a democrat named bob torcelli, when he went up in flame in a

big embarrassing want on bribery scandal of his own, that happened in the middle of bob running for reelection. it did not totally blow up and he did not quit the race until a month before the election. he is already on the ballot. now he quits. what's going to happen now? there is old retired frank lautenberg saying pick me. i am desperate to get back to the senate. he had to go to the supreme court of the state of new jersey to decide whether he could be allowed to switcheroo without winning a primary or doing anything to earn the spot. the state supreme court let him on the ballot and so he ran for reelection and had to quit and they swapped in his name and he ended up back in the senate after he left. frank's whole career has been amazing. it did not start until late in life. he had served in world war ii

and came back and got his degree and became a very, very successful and rich business man. do you get paid by payroll service. does it say adp on your payroll stub? that's frank lautenberg. when he got into politics, every time he ran he won and there was some amazing story or amazing circumstances surrounding it. it is therefore in keeping with the circumstances of frank lautenberg's that his passing brought about another one-of-a-kind drama in new jersey politics. you have to know about his legacy and what he did with his time in the senate. the thing he is most famous for was the fight he led and won in 1989 in the senate. the first time around. he was a two-pack a day smoker at point and he quit smoking and made a change in the country for everyone that made it so airplanes no longer need to have exhaust pipes that come out of

the passenger compartment. we have the exhaust pipes for the engines now. >> the new prohibition take effect three months after the president signs the legislation. after that the only domestic flights would be 12 daily flights from inland cities to hawaii that take longer that six hours and one flight from alaska also more than six hours. at l.a. international airport, they snowed the smudge mark where cigarette smoke is vented. an ex-smoker is all for the extended ban. >> the test thing that ever happened. it should have happened years ago. >> laura said six hours is a long time to go without a cigarette. >> everybody should have the right to do whatever they want to do. people should be able to smoke. >> loving anarchist sentiments

like that aside, nobody should be able to do whatever they want on an airplane including smoking cigarett cigarettes. in 1984 when she was a freshman senator in the minority party, he led the fight to establish a national drinking age of 21. after that they drank as young as 18. in 2000 he led the way for standards for drunk driving laws. he supported the clean up of the fight for the funding of amtrak and the family and medical leave act and the ryan white care act for aids. he is a major reason why if you are convicted of domestic violence, you have a hard time legally getting a gun in this country. having benefitted after kworld war 2, he was a leading fighter for the new post 9-11 administration. in the obama administration his health was not great. he announced he would not run for reelection.

in a wheelchair he nevertheless came back in april to cast votes in favor of gun reform laws that he had long championed, including background checks and assault weapons ban. now with frank lautenberg dying this morning at the age of 89, the governor of new jersey who is probably the highest profile republican in the country, chris christie is left with a bunch of impossible decisions that have been left now to him from this proud liberal democratic senator who was like chris christie and his loud ideological nemesis for the entire time chris christie has been in office. the first thing is what to do with a bunch of gun bills sitting on his desk. frank lautenberg is a champion of reformat the federal level. at the state level democrats and republicans have just passed a number of bipartisan gun reform measures and chris christie has them ones it desk right now and

has to decide whether or not to sign. the clock is ticking. it's still that any republican with national ambitions should not sign anything related to gun reformat all. it would be a big deal in new jersey if he vetoed this. the terrorism watch list. should you be allowed to buy explosives and guns if you are on the no-fly list? how about 50 caliber weapons that maybe can shoot aircraft out of the skies and they are taking off the landing? does that seem like a useful thing in new jersey? the governor christie has to decide on is among the low hanging fruit. if chris christie cannot sign bills like that, honestly no republican can sign any gun legislation anywhere in the country. governor vift kristi has to decide whether he wants to defy

and new jersey overwhelming public opinion on easy bills because of his national ambitions. on top of that, he has to decide what to do about frank lautenberg's senate seat. chris christie has the power and the responsibility to appoint somebody to fill the seat in the senate, new jersey state law is not just unclear, but contradictory on the question of whether or not the person governor christie gets to,a point to the seat will hold the seat until the term is up next november or whether they have to be on the ballot right away this november. along sides a man named chris christie who is running for reelection. new jersey is a democratic state, but they like chris christie. a democrat is likely to win. he could hurt his own chances and hurt the margin where he is expected to win if he decides

the seat with a likely democratic winner has to be voted on. if he said the election should not be held until next november, he looks scared. should he appoint a place holder who will not run for the seat in the long run. new jersey is such a democratic state that would set up whatever democrat to win when the election rolls around. should chris christie appoint a hard core conservative republican to the seat. he can pick anybody he wants. should he shore up his national standing in his own party which thinks of him as a bit of a squish. an ideological squish. that would help him in terms of scouring the nomination and won't help him win the general election and won't help him in new jersey where he is the only republican anybody likes state-wide and then the question of corey booker. the mayor of newark, a democrat who said he would win whenever he has to win it. chris christie and corey booker

get along. b, seem to respect each other and are not running for governor because corey booker decided not to challenge him. and d, the two of them in this circumstance present the most delicious complicated frank lautenberg could not have invented it himself with the circumstance in new jersey ever for chris christie. if chris christie appoints corey booker, democrat to that senate seat, he would be appointing a guy who new jersey probably wants anyway. he would be infuriating his own party of course and making himself look like the most bipartisan, practical, across the aisle kind of guy you can imagine. that would make democrats absolutely terrified of him as a presidential candidate. i have no idea what's going to happen, but it will happen fast. stay with us. [ female announcer ] doctors trust calcium plus vitamin d

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causes he believed in and as an adversary in the political world. >> governor chris christie, probably the highest profile republican in the country this morning eulogizing frank lautenbe lautenberg. whether to replace him and who to replace him with. the host of up with steve. steve is also a writer at salon. don't you have a long sorted history as a political reporter? >> anybody is thwarted, but i did three years there. i love that you put that out there. >> it is, you do have to take the context seriously. noting that the first time that seat was open was because of ad scam and the bribery scandal. it's rich anyway. am i right in thinking they were at each other's throats for most

of the time? >> they did -- his academy incarnation and he left in 2000 and came back in 2002 when you had that situation. this guy freed from a lot of limits he felt. he worried about reelection and in the last decade, he was outspoken and strident at the height of the iraq war. he called them chicken hawks and had a doll made. he never liked lautenberg, but he really irritated them. chris christie gave voice to that. it is interesting to see. >> do you think that history affects the kind of person who chris christie picks for this seat? conceivably whatsoever he picks could be there until a year from november or depending on how they interpret the law and the state and how he decides to move forward, it could be until this

november. which direction do you think it will go? >> i talked to a number of people and i think basically the kind of person is dependent on when the election takes place. the first question is when. he will appoint somebody, but the question is are they going to run first in november 2014 or november 2013? >> does he get to decide when? >> the courts will probably decide. his preference is november 2014. he is in great shape this year and doesn't want to muck it up. he doesn't want to be running with corey booker's name. he wants that. the question is two fold. can he justify in the court of public relation saying you know what, voters are likely democrat and i'm a republican and i will bypass the opportunity to put that before the voters now. can you get away with that in the court of public opinion and the system because democrats badly want this election in 2013

and if he sues, the issue for democrats is they are looking at the gubernatorial candidate who is likely to lose this fall. that jeopardizes the machine in new jersey. all of the democrats have to run with her. if the democrats can get corey booker at the top of the ticket, that may not help barbara bono, but that helps a lot of democrats. they want it to be this november. the question is when in terms of how it affects who. if it's november 2014, what i am hearing is chris christie is much more likely to appoint a conservative. he is thinking in terms of 2016 and if it's november 2013, he is picking his running mate in a blue state. much more likely to go with a moderate. >> i am picking a cross party choice at that point. i think that would be the big chris christie patented one finger salute to the political

system he is so known for. thanks a lot, steve. good to have you. the most bizarre congressional trip abroad maybe of all time. the leaked case of the soenchry and a preview of what will happen all summer is coming up. stay with us.

he has been hard to kill and under siege. parts one and two. now steven segal is in russia with a delegation of congress people. we have the tape. there is dancing. that's coming up. he's a punk! get him! everybody has different investment objectives,

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followed. they were clearly engaged in operations against a hostile force. there was dispute about how hostile the situation was and reuters asked the military if they could see video that the troops might have taken of the incident. they said no and they filed the act request and still no. another years went by and in april 2010, the video of that air strike which killed that reuters driver and photographer and ten other people. this taken from the perspective of the gun site on the helicopter. after having the military tell them no, they were able to see it and the world was able to see it three years down the road because it was posted on line by wikileaks. it is a short version and ia 40 minute long version. they added written narration what they believe was happening in the video. they called it unprovoked even though some seemed to have

weapons. the ak-47s and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. they said they have the video from a source and would not name who it was. the video was released about a month later and the criminal investigation arrested a 22-year-old army intelligence analyst on active duty in iraq. the private first class was suspected of leaking not just the apache helicopter video, but classified documents and interim military reports. over the course of the year sitting in a confinement camp and a military prison, the troph of information that he now admits he sent to wikileaks, the hundreds of thousands of files made a lot of news. >> they ke vealed even as pakistan accepted billions, intelligence officials allegedly conspired with leaders to attack american forces in afghanistan

and in may 2007, the taliban shot down a u.s. helicopter with a missile, killing seven soldiers. if nato commanders concealed that fact, 66,000 irk racky civilians were killed even though they claim they'd never kept such statistics. officials estimate that the names of more than 300 iraqi informants working with the americans appear in the documents. according to documents posted by wikileaks this weekend u.s. military knew of several dozen incidents. >> this is the third and by far the biggest release of new secrets by wikileaks. friends like french president sarkozy described as thin-skinned and an echl ro are with no clothes. called hitler. gadhafi is strange and always a dumped by a blond ukrainian

nurse and kim jung il, a flabby old chap. he said yemen's president told david petraeus they will say the bombs r ours and not yours. hillary clinton and condoleezza rice before her, ordered embassies and inteligence to gather private information on un leaders and diplomats, including computer passwords and dna and fingerprints. >> manning is accused of leaking classified do you means that were things that were embarrassing like insulting names used to describe the french president and they thought kim jung ilwas flabby. the cover ups of attacks on soldiers in afghanistan. a death count of civilians in iraq. the names of hundreds of informants. the government of yemen signing off on the united states secret drone problem and agreeing to help cover it up. spying on officials and

representatives on the national security. bradley manning plead guilt tow ten of the 22 charges against him. he is being court marshalled for the remaining charges including aiding the enemy. they are not seeking the death penalty, but he could be looking at life. does the question of whether or not he gets life depend on what the court marshall proves in terms of his motive? if he leaked for good reasons or bad reasons? how is the judge going to decide that? elizabeth is the codirector of the program at the brennan center for justice. thank you very much for being with us. >> thank you. >> it the issue of intent or motive passing on the documents, is that the center of this case and how serious it is against him? >> strangely enough it's not. that's what you read about in the newspapers. is he a hero or traitor? the judge already ruled his

subjective motive is not relevant to the charges that were brought against him under the espionage act. the only thing is whether a reasonable person would have had reason to believe that the disclosures could harm national security. it's more complicated under the enemy charge. he did have to have some kind of evil intent is what they call it. he had to know and really set up to be giving intelligence to the enemy and associated forces. >> people who support the social movement outside the case and also his defense during the court marshall, they are calling him a whistle blower. it's sort of a legal term of art. >> it's the protection act that defines a whistle blower as

reason to believe the information they are disclosing sos serious government abuse, fraud, or waste. that's not at issue because if he showed, it's not a defense to the changes that were brought against him under the espionage act and aiding the enemy. whether you think he's a whistle blower or a traitor is not relevant to the charges against him. >> why do you think that is the basis of the defense and the defense is bringing it up to try to help show that he wasn't intentionally passing information on to the enemy. in the court of public opinion, it's really about our understanding of national security leaks and how they should be treated in cases where the leaker does not intend to harm the national security. bradley manning is somebody who

downloaded 750,000 documents and passed them along. i personally don't think of him as a classic whistle blower because i don't think he could have read the do you means. if you give him 30 seconds per document and 12 hours a day, it would take him longer than the time he was in iraq. he had no intent to harm the united states. really should the espionage act used to prosecute enemies of the state be used in the situation? as the obama administration has done. >> are codirector of the program at the brennan center for justice. thank you. >> it will be about 12 weeks in terms of how long the case will go on. itingly itingly -- it will be about 12 peninsulas and they are moving out of the realm of great interest to his supporters to now once again of great national

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mystery solved. when the head of the tea party caucus, former presidential candidate michele bachmann announced resignation last week and a nouned she would not run for reelection, one of the many

interesting things is she did it by video and then she was unavailable for comment. her staff would not say where she was. she is effectively phoning in her resignation statement and then she is nowhere to be found? it's kind of a strange way to do it, but we now know where she was. she was with this guy. this is the 1990s action movie hero, steven segal seen here dancing in russia. if you don't recognize him from the dancing, that is because he no longer looks like he looked when he was a famous action movie hero fighting with gary busey in this pot boiler. it's the same guy. this is him. this is him in chechnya recently. that's on the right of your scree screen. that's steven segal. on the left side is what he is

emulating. you never know how american celebrities translate. every once in a while you get dennis rodman being welcome to north korea as a national hero. vladamir putin loves him some steven segal. that extended to him getting a welcome like a head of state from the putin-supported regime in chechnya where michele bachmann comes in. michele bachmann and steve king and dana war backer and bill keating and paul cook went to russia to investigate the boston bombing suspects from chechnya with steven segal. he wore those wacky glasses. the members said he set up a bunch of meetings for them with the fsb. that's what the kgb became. they wanted to go to chechnya

itself. segal wanted to meet the president of chechnya who is accused of kidnapping, torture and of his opponents. somewhere between that and accepting a free flight on the plane to go g to chechnya, that fell through. house republicans decided their contribution to american's foreign policy responsibilities would be to introduce legislation banning president obama from closing the prison in guantanamo. the republicans ban is folded into the bill funding the whole defense department that includes hundreds of millions of dollars to keep guantanamo going and to shore it up for years to come. the huge funding bill for the pentagon gets a vote this week and the republicans will make the president veto all funding for the entire u.s. military if he wants to try to close guantanamo. there is a lot going on in the world right now. turkey is now swaying under straight days of increasingly massive protests against what

previously seemed to be a stable government. mostly young people, but all kinds of people calling the government authoritarian and anti-democratic and taking to the streets in protest. the war in syria is the syria i on-going war in syria, with complex international dynamics and politics surrounding that conflict, encompassing russia, the eu, israel, lebanon, jordan, iraq, turkey as well. there's a war on in afghanistan with two u.s. soldiers, a policeman, nine kids killed in the eastern part of the country today, and a suicide bomb attack outside a school. the war we left in our wake in iraq heated up with the u.n. saying this weekend that the death toll just last month from bombings and assassinations and other attacks in iraq was over 1,000 people killed. it is a big, complicated world out there, with a lot of particularly difficult foreign policy problems confronting our country. and six sitting members of congress decided to meet with the kgb on a trip arranged by

steven seagal, the action movie guy from the '90s. four of six members are on the intelligence committee or foreign relations committee in congress, including michele bachmann. what do other countries think of us when a congressional delegation like this shows up in their country? ♪

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they used to be? >> they've gotten much worse in the past couple years. >> problems are worse. >> absolutely, it is much worse. >> i agree with my colleagues, much worse. >> i concur it is much worse. >> congress can be a weird place, but that has to be one of the weirdest moments in congress ever. altered voices. that happened in september, 1997 when the u.s. senate held hearings into the irs. the hearings were designed as a study in mellow drama, with horror stories, accusations, altered voices and screens. those hearings back then were the work of senator william roth, republican of delaware. the first round of roth hearings were such a hit, he did them the next year as well in 1998. that was the year that godwin's law wept. >> one of my clients put a .357 to his head and blew his head off four days before his case went to trial. he couldn't take the stress any

more. >> i am one of the few taxpayers blessed with resources to fight back against gestapo like tactics. >> they accumulated this gestapo like effort. >> such gestapo like actions are uncalled for. >> the people out in the field refer to the criminal investigation division as another state sanctioned terrorist group, gestapo from germany, western europe problems from world war ii. that's the office that you would think the gestapo ran, not americans run that office. >> i used to believe such things could only happen in a communist blocked country or police state. i don't believe that any more. >> witnesses like that, having them testify to the gestapo evils of the irs. the irs is constrained by law from defending itself. any taxpayer can tell the senate about unfairness of their treatment by the irs, but unless the taxpayer gives the irs permission to discuss his or her

case publicly, the irs can't say anything in its own defense, even to rebut false charges, so it is essentially a free play, you can say anything you want. you can't be rebutted unless you allow yourself to be rebutted, and why would you allow that. if you liked that in the 1990s, welcome to the sequel. this year, coburn says his constituents were targeted because they gave money to mitt romney campaign. michele bachmann says to fox news the irs uses your political ideology to deny you doctor's appointments. the newspaper owner strip club owner says he was targeted by the irs not because of anything else about him but because he likes the tea party. and a st. louis tv reporter says the irs started hammering him after he challenged president obama's economic policies in an interview. that reporter later got fired and then admitted his, quote, issues with the irs preceded that interview by several years. as a taxpayer, that guy or anybody is free to tell whatever

story you like about the irs, unless you give the irs permission to, the irs by law cannot respond. a neat trick, right? today and capitol hill, congress asked the new acting irs commissioner about an anti-abortion group, which says they had to not protest planned parenthood. >> that is completely unacceptable. do you agree with that? >> let me start saying i think your question enters into a particular taxpayer, therefore restricted from commenting. as a broader matter, those types of question are from my vantage point, and early in the job inexcusable. >> day one of hearings in congress about the irs. but there will be more. the acting commissioner saying totally agree that kind of thing shouldn't happen, but also i can't defend, describe, or even address what the agency did or didn't do in that particular

case, the law says i can't. tomorrow, that same iowa anti-abortion group will testify before a different house committee at which the irs still will not be able to defend itself. they say though were targeted for personal beliefs. if you wonder what the foregone conclusion of that hearing would be, it is there in the title. as a matter of governance, the irs has to explain itself and is having to explain itself on the policy matter of what key words were used to single out applications for tax exempt status for getting more scrutiny. if the irs got it wrong and it was hinged on ideology, they have to figure out how to make that right. everybody agrees. does that mean that the irs is auditing all the republican guys that tom coburn knows in oklahoma and only getting that because they were republicans and gave money to mitt romney and what do you know, audit? who knows, who can say. but it sounds great. and conveniently the irs is precluded by law from being able to refute any of it.

so it sounds even better when you just keep repeating it. that means happy subpoena summer. it is the hog wild anti-clinton '90s all over again, we are about to have a whole summer of quite possibly nonsense, unproven assertions, all summer long. it is going to be a long, hot, stupid summer. we have done this all before, but at least this time we know how it all ends. now it is time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." thanks for being with us tonight. we have a lot to get to tonight, including this. you need to know exactly what kind of sex can give you cancer. i mean, don't even think about touching that remote or touching anything until you hear from a doctor who is going to be on here later about exactly what can give you cancer. and then of course there's my lifelong love affair with cheerios. and why that affair got